Sanctuary Cities in Name Only

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New York police officers on Saturday watched people protest against the immigration policies of President Trump.CreditSpencer Platt/Getty Images

By Shakeer Rahman and Robin Steinberg

Feb. 15, 2017

President Trump’s plan to deport millions of people appears to be underway. Last week, federal immigration officials arrested more than 600 people at their homes and workplaces in at least 11 states, sending terror through immigrant communities.

The abruptness of the raids provoked criticism from local officials, including Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, who vowed to “stand with” immigrant communities. But mass deportation under President Trump will also happen through a more routine policy that is in the mayor’s control: endless, unnecessary arrests for low-level offenses, which end up feeding immigrants into the federal government’s deportation machine.

It’s not enough for cities like New York to declare themselves “sanctuaries,” which simply means that the local police won’t detain noncitizens on the federal government’s behalf. If cities really want to protect immigrants, they must also end the quota-driven style of policing that makes immigrants the victims of unnecessary arrests and disproportionate punishment.

Many of these unnecessary arrests stem from the discredited idea that a draconian crackdown on the most minor offenses — littering, selling loose cigarettes, biking on the sidewalk — will prevent more serious crimes. This model of policing, known as broken windows or zero tolerance, helped to drive mass incarceration. Its next cost could be mass deportation.

While the federal government runs immigration courts and prisons, local police departments are its eyes and ears. Across the country, whenever they arrest someone, city departments send fingerprints and other identifying information to federal officials. Whether the offense is as trivial as selling mango slices on the street without a license or taking a shortcut through a park after dark, federal agents are notified of an immigrant’s name and how to find him or her.

President Trump has announced his plans for all those names. Each week, the White House will publish a list of crimes that immigrants have been accused of, and the government will prioritize the deportation of anyone “charged with any criminal offense,” even if it never leads to a conviction.

Undocumented immigrants are not the only ones at risk. Any noncitizen can be thrown out of the country for minor offenses like simple marijuana possession or any “crime involving moral turpitude,” a broad term that covers everything from jumping a subway turnstile to selling counterfeit T-shirts.

Even if cities stop sharing arrest information, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been known to send plainclothes agents to local courts, where they wait for immigrants to appear for misdemeanor charges. In his first week, President Trump ordered the immigration agency to triple its number of agents.

The Yale law professor Issa Kohler-Hausmann has observed that New York’s conviction rates plummeted even as broken windows policing drove up misdemeanor arrests. She argues that these constant arrests aren’t meant to prove or punish guilt. Rather, they simply “track and sort people” over time. The process is itself the punishment. Tracking and sorting millions of people is precisely where Immigration and Customs Enforcement needs local help.

For those who are worried about going back to the old days of high crime rates, policing reform isn’t a retreat from law and order. It just means smarter solutions. For example, subway fare evasion and public urination are problems that could be dealt with through civil fines — or better yet, fare subsidies and public restrooms. But they’re often punished as crimes.

Some cities are already taking steps to ease draconian policing. Last month, Los Angeles vowed to stop arresting street vendors who lack a license. That offense had long been a misdemeanor but will now be punished with a fine. Last summer, New York City similarly decriminalized a handful of offenses like littering and spitting. Mayor de Blasio must continue to retreat from his predecessor’s overly aggressive enforcement of so-called quality-of-life offenses; other cities should do the same.

New York has also shown leadership with its Immigrant Family Unity Project, which provides lawyers to low-income people in immigration detention. The lawyers help ensure that New Yorkers aren’t exiled from their communities to countries they left as children or where they might face persecution. Having an immigration lawyer can multiply a person’s chance of winning a deportation case 10-fold. This is the first such program in the nation, and the presidential election underscores its importance.

States also should try to undo damage. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York recently asked the legislature to decriminalize minor marijuana possession (which can be used to deport even green-card holders), citing a “dramatic shift in public opinion” on the issue. The governor should invite pardon applications from immigrants, to make sure no one is deported just because he was arrested before the public shifted its views.

President Trump’s plans to deport millions of immigrants can’t happen without boots on the ground. Until cities reject the failed thinking that led to mass incarceration, local police and prosecutors will be doing the legwork for mass deportation.

Shakeer Rahman will be a Skadden fellow at the Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit legal services organization, of which Robin Steinberg is the founder and executive director.